RDF Working Group Charter Extension Request

The RDF working group, created in February 2011, has an initial lifetime of 24 months, with a charter ending on 31 January 2013. The group has just released 4 Last Call Working Drafts and requests an extension of eleven months to progress these specifications to Recommendation (until 31 December 2013). Note that the timetable is a bit stricter and aims at the Recommendations during summer 2013, but the extension leaves some room for possible shifts.

The abbreviations in the tables below stand for the following Working Group documents:

RDF Working Group Status

The group has a healthy membership and a set of core participants (about 20) actively contributing to and and reviewing specifications. The mailing list archive (over 6,700 messages) and the tracker (111 issues, 12 of which remain open) are good indicators of the activity of the working group. Oracle, IBM, Google and the Apache Software Foundation are active participants.

Many members have indicated their intention to implement the specifications, suggesting the need for this decadal update to RDF.

Since its launch, the group has released the following working drafts. Four Recommendation-track documents were published as Last Call Working Draft.

Deviation from Charter

The RDF working group charter identifies eight possible deliverables, all of which of which may be on recommendation track. Dates are expressed in the form T+X, where T is 2011-02, the start of the group activities, and X the number of months.

Most of the work of the group was delayed due to one protracted discussion regarding RDF graphs, especially the differences in semantics between various deployed use cases and the 2004 RDF Semantics Recommendation. This discussion reached a natural equilibrium point around September 2012, which clarified the group's position. We have no major technical issues to discuss and the way is thus clear to make quick progress on the remaining documents. Most of them (rdf-cas, rdf-xml, rdf-schema and rdf-primer) now require only minor updates to bring them in line with the forthcoming rdf-sem.

Specifications requiring substantial editorial work

D2 (RDF 1.1 Semantics) was substantially delayed due to fundamental disagreements within the group. However, all 12 issues have been successfully resolved and the document is now being drafted. A note on the semantics of datasets is available, which takes in consideration some of the decisions made for RDF semantics.

D7 (RDF Primer) is now in progress after all major technical issues have been resolved.

D8 (RDF Test Cases) should proceed quickly now that all major technical issues have been resolved.

Specifications requiring minor editorial work

D1 (RDF 1.1 Concepts and Abstract Syntax) has made steady progress and is nearly ready for Last Call status. The document is currently waiting on the first WD of RDF Semantics.

D3 (RDF/XML Syntax Specification) was determined not to require major changes or updates. Minor errata will be repaired.

D4 (RDF Vocabulary Description Language 1.1: RDF Schema) was determined not to require major changes or updates. Minor errata will be repaired.

D5 (RDF Turtle Syntax Specification) has proceeded in an orderly fashion. Discussions related to RDF graphs and datasets necessitated the splitting of this deliverable into two documents, Turtle and TriG, as allowed by our charter. It has also been decided to publish a separate WG Note for ntriples, instead incorporating it into the Turtle specification (or keeping it in the RDF Test document, as in the 2004 version)

D6 (RDF JSON Syntax Specification) was returned to the JSON-LD Interest Group for further work for approximately one year until adequately mature. The specification was returned to the RDF WG in June 2012. Work has proceeded consistently since that time.